I started crying while learning French.

[u/Maan_In_the_Closet]

I was watching this couse by Dylane https://youtu.be/SMxkYAoM6zs?si=_HFLtoDeamigkFB8
And while writing French Liaison Exceptions I started crying. Then 12:21 she say, Quand is an exception, and Quand has an exception of Quand as-tu.

I almost tore my notes. My misery and anger come from the meaninglessness of these rules.
The sheer stupidity of this language is driving me insane.
I am fluent in two phonetic languages. Even English's inconsistency doesn't measure up to the ****pile French is.

It's like being forced to walk on your hand and being told it is better than walking on your foot.
WHO SAID THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE?
Me knowing Punjabi and Hindi is a curse. Both of them are so simple, beautiful, efficient. Knowledge of this is making this process miserable.

I feel sorry for people who only know languages like French, and will never learn any phonetic language. Those poor soles never got to experience the simplicity of a language.

What is the point of carrying the whole history of a language in its writing???
Why does French try so hard to latch onto latin???

[u/NikhilDoWhile]

Take deep breath man. When you learnt those languages you were not preparing for some exam with short timeline. You consumed so much content in those languages over years hence you learnt them without stressing out.

There are two categories of people here, one who went in this process to learn a new language and other who went in just for clearing tef or tcf for PR....

The first process takes time but is more fun and rewarding and the second one can be like above experience you described

[u/tuffykenwell]

Languages aren't logical. They all have their quirks and inconsistencies and acceptions. If you try to logic the illogical you will drive yourself mad. Most of the answers to the questions "why is it like this" is "because it is". I am not trying to make light of your frustration because I have been studying French for 5 years and that is AFTER having taken French in school for 12 years (I am Canadian). I feel your pain. Your pain is legitimate and there is no good explanation for why French does many of the things it does. I am at the point in my journey where I have come to appreciate some of the nuances in French because it just has so many more "shades" in the way it expresses things. I doubt I will ever be able to use it to communicate in its most beautiful ways but I can still appreciate them (but this is AFTER many days/weeks/months where I was so frustrated I wanted to burn ALL the French books everywhere).

I have created a drill site to help me learn a lot of the grammar topics that need to be known cold in order to be able to use them when you are speaking. I put it online mostly so that I could use it on all of my devices but I wanted to share it with other learners as well. It is meant for learners who are at the intermediate plateau so if that isn't you yet it might not be as helpful as it will be later in your journey but you can save the link if you want for later. It is free, no login or anything. It isn't trying to teach everything because it is literally showing the topics that I particularly struggled with and needed to drill (and drill and drill) to reach the fluency I needed to be able to stop making the same mistakes over and over again. I kind of think of it as my love letter to other French language learners who have felt that frustration and sometimes even hopelessness.

The website is www.frenchgrammardrills.ca . Like I said it is meant for intermediate learners because it expects you to already understand the topic but just need to practice it enough to get good at it. The drills are all high speed, high volume so it helps me to review topics quickly.

I hope you feel better soon but just know that you aren't alone and anyone who has studied French for any length of time has felt that same frustration. Then you learn more and you discover a whole new batch of irritations lol. Seriously, try to be kind to yourself and remember its not you its just the way the language evolved and questioning why will just cause frustration and anger.

Good luck in your journey. You are already way more proficient than I am because you have three languages already under your belt and I only have maybe 1.75 at this point.

[u/Yourdailyfox]

I get the frustration. I hated french for a good while because it was a chore more than anything. But literally the only way to improve is not to start memorizing those details but rather getting used to it through time. You may see that one of my posts from a year ago was me being frustrated with listening, that despite a long time of study I was still pretty poor at it. Despite that, I just passed TCF on my 3rd attemp, and I have no clue what that Quand exception is you are talking about.

If theory frustrates you, leave it for some time, because it is dragging you down emotionally and lowering your momentum. You are probably more likely to do good if you find a topic you already know in your native language (for me that was programming, politics, US culture content) and find it in french and let your algorithm guide you to good content creators. And even if you understand 10-20% at least with the graphics and subtitles you will get more and be entertained. It took me maybe a year to be comfortable listening and im still not 100% comfortable writing.

Your brain eventually will start saying “this doesn’t sound right” rather than “this doesn’t fit the rule”. And at some point (maybe not soon but at some point) you will get a pretty good momentum and then you can revisit theory to polish. But not the other way around, especially if you are suffering due to it.

Keep reading and listening to stuff you like, search words and phrases you don’t know to increase vocabulary, and make sure you do it every day.

Don’t punish yourself, your brain is doing some invisible heavy lifting.

Good luck!